


--cool kids never sleep--

by burusume



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Yugotalia
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, Multi, yeah there's a ghost too but...it's not really a ghost actually
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:13:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burusume/pseuds/burusume
Summary: A whole summer has passed since Janez's suicide but sometimes Dražen can still see his corpse hanging from the ceiling.





	1. Chapter I - The Brownian Motion

**Author's Note:**

> This is a CroSlo chapter fic, written as a collaboration between me and zelo-s (ludgerkresnik on ao3); I came up with this silly idea for a Ghost Friend AU one day and we decided to just play with it from there. It turned darker. The beginning has been written by her, while the rest of it by yours truly.

_“I love you.”_

Dražen slumps forward in his seat, loosely holding his mechanical pencil between his fingers. He can’t concentrate. After these last few days, there’s no way he can concentrate. It’s just not possible.

 “Mr. Krleža?” His professor calls out to him, tone impatient and Dražen snaps his head up and squints at the board. He heard nothing of what was said. “Do you have the answer?”

 “Um,” He tries to think, but nothing is coming to his mind. His teacher gives a heavy sigh.

 “Pay closer attention. Mr. Jones, answer?” Dražen slumps forward again and rests his elbows on the table and buries his face in his hands. Normally, he has the answer. There’s a sharp poke in his back, and he cranes his head around. He’s met with the freckled face of a girl whose name he can’t remember. She shows him a folded up piece of paper, and he quickly takes it while the professor’s back his turned.

 **i’m sorry about your loss** is scrawled across it. Right. By now, Janez’s suicide is all over the school campus. He glares over at Alfred, who has barely even glanced at him since the news came out. It was supposed to be a secret, he thinks. Instead, Alfred had to go and blab about it to everyone and now, he’s been getting looks and there are whispers that follow him.

 He almost crumples the paper up in anger, but he knows she means no harm. He writes  _thank you_  on the paper, and hands it back. That was the end of that communication, and he’s the first to leave the classroom and swears he can hear someone call out his name. He decides to skip the rest of the day, but he doesn’t want to head home.

  _“D-Dražen, I um. That’s very…sudden I guess. Y-you know I’m with–”_

 He feels bitter anger rising in him, nauseating and dizzying. He kicks the brick wall of the school, the anger still lingering. Janez’s family is holding the funeral for him tomorrow, and surprisingly, Dražen was invited despite everything.

 Graduation is the day after that, and Dražen doesn’t know if he’s even going to go. He doesn’t think he can stomach it. His mother did say he can miss the remainder of school if he thinks he can’t handle it. With a heavy sigh, Dražen gets in his car and drives away. He won’t be missing anything important. Out of the corner of his eye, Dražen swears he could see Janez but when he looks, his passenger seat is empty.

 It’s upon realizing this, his stomach starts to hurt.

 –

Dražen skips the funeral, and graduation. He spends his summer avoiding everyone, and not answering their text messages until they stopped. It’s a hot and angry summer, sweltering in the heat and barely moving from his bed. There are days where he thinks he can see Janez’s corpse hanging from his ceiling, and he wonders if he’s going crazy.

 “College is just around the corner,” His mother had said to him one morning, and Dražen feels his stomach lurch into his throat. He feels like puking. “It’ll only get better.” He debates on not going, but knows his dad will be pissed if he doesn’t.

 September comes around, and he finds himself puking the night before.

 —-

 Dražen feels like the sweetest pilgrim, marching along the hallways of this old building he’ll get to know much better during those next four years of his life, that is, unless he decides to drop out. If that were to become a reality, he thinks, he could come from time to time and talk with the walls made out of deep red bricks and tell them about how much their color reminds him of that tiny drop of blood,  _Janez’s_  blood, he had seen that day when he got a papercut.

 But that day is long gone now, along with so many other days and memories he’d shared with that boy. Right now, 10 am, would be the ideal time for Dražen to shake off all memories of papercuts and conversation ideas with walls and realise the fact that he’s both wobbling on his feet, crashing into innocent students in the hallway and miss his first class on his very first day as a sociology major.

 “I’m Dražen. I like reading data on 18th century European cities’ social distribution and bawl my eyes out while watching the  _Ouran Host Club’s_  finale. I need to trust you in order to tell you the recipe for my conditioner so please do not ask me about this yet.”

The blonde girl before him widens her eyes, nods amused and moves on to the nearest person. His first class isn’t even much regarding an introduction in the study of his major, rather, it’s just their energetic dean proposing an  _exciting_  way of getting to know each other: move all of the desks to the side and let the students wander around this newly-acquired open space and strike conversations.

However, after shutting down so effectively that girl, Dražen of course has to wonder why no one approaches him again and why he feels like retreating towards the back of the classroom, where most of the chairs have been set. He takes a seat and waits for the class to end while unconsciously taking in the appearances and personalities displayed by his new colleagues.

—//

Bless the cafeteria’s menu for the salad Dražen is currently indulging himself from, since he feels like he hardly would’ve been able to stomach anything else. His food companion also helps in distracting himself from the noisy atmosphere, and even from a random guy who’s just now looming over him.

“Hey. Mind if I sit next to you?”

Dražen lazily raises his head, and then just like there is no presence before him, goes back to picking up the chicken bits from his salad.

“Alright. I’ll take that as a yes.”

And so the guy sets, and starts slurping on his soup. That, for our Dražy however, is pure cruelty.

“If you’ve even decided to sit next to me, could you please eat that soup a little bit  _slower?”_

“Slower…?” the guy pulls off some perfectly-arched eyebrows for a confused look.

“Yes, slower. Like not slurping it as if there’s no tomorrow.”

The guy just stares, then proceeds to down the soup with sharper, albeit  _slower,_  slurps. Dražen can feel his patience slowly peel off himself.

“Are you doing that on purpose?”

“Well, no, actually I  _am_  following your commands.”

“Alright, then one of us will have to  _move,”_  Dražen hisses out, already glaring at this stranger who had the audacity of taking a seat next to him, exactly to  _him_  in this huge cafeteria.

The guy merely blinks at that. He won’t just let him be like that easily, though.

“Y’know, maybe we could just work it out-I mean I’ve noticed even since you came into our classroom and started pulling all of your notebooks and pens from your bag that you’re pretty nervous and anxious but hey, that’s perfectly fine becau–”

“You stop it right there. Do we know each other?”

“Well, not yet but-”

“Then what gives you the right to lecture me?”

The guy just fiddles with his high ponytail and sighs.

“I-I wasn’t lecturing you, it’s just…I wanted to assure you that it’s ok to feel all nervous and anxious on your first day.”

“I already knew that,” Dražen deadpans.

“Well ok then, that’s fantastic.”

There’s a long pause, and Dražen stands up, already full from half the salad he ate. He plans on doing a deeper tour into this building and maybe find some safe, quiet spots.

“Already leaving? There’s like,” the guy takes a quick look at his phone,”half an hour left of this lunch break.”

“Yeah. I’m full.”

The guy gives a sidelong stare, looking almost irritated by the amount of salad that’s still in Dražen’s bowl.

“You almost didn’t even touch i–”

“What’s your name?”

_“Ha?”_

“Your name. I don’t know it.”

“Oh, um,” the guy clears his throat, “it’s Mihai.”

“Alright then,  _Mihai,_  do you have a desk partner yet?”

“No…?”

“Move into my desk then. I’d rather have you there than another person whom i’d have to pull off a small chat with agai–”

“You call  _that_  small chat?”

Dražen stops dead in his tracks, and glares at him. Even if he knows he’s right, he couldn’t have pushed himself to actually communicate with him.

“F-for the time being, yes. J-just move in as soon as you enter the library–erm, I mean the classroom. Bye.”

And with that, Dražen does a half-hearted turn around his heels and repeats the scenario of him bumping into people while his mind’s wandering off to another places.


	2. Chapter II - Waving Through A Wall

The ash melts on the windowsill before getting into the arms of the unusually chilly wind, for September still. Dražen just craved a cigarette; he’s told himself that if he were to smoke one now, when his mood hasn’t been shaked good enough yet, he could lower the chances of getting a blown-out attack at himself, by himself, later.

He might’ve felt very light-headed after that grandiose exit from the cafeteria, but he still remembered what did he have to look for if he wanted a quiet place: the staircase closer to the marginal walls of the building, the lateral one. Such a staircase almost guaranteed general emptiness, and an ability to get to higher floors than the central, larger one. And he hit the jackpot this time, he finally did: he even reached the (albeit, locked) attic. Bag abandoned on the last set of stairs that went to the locked room and lighting the first cigarette out of a fresh pack followed suit.

Dražen checks the time on his phone: still 23 minutes worth of break. He taps his fingers on the dirty, rusty windowsill. Forgot to cut and buff his nails yet again.

He can kindly give out a list of all of the things he had forgotten to do. Or that he feels he had fucked up, because they didn’t turn up to his  _expectations_. Like sketching the pose of a character in a manner he perceives as incredibly stiff, or not making the lines flowy enough within the piece altogether. Or not lining up all of his most-used pairs of shoes perfectly. Or starting to cry when he’d get full 10 hours of sleep instead of waking up after only 3 and starting to work on what he planned to show his teachers at the art school to get faster guidance on which path should he take.

Dražen wanted, quite desperately, to succeed into not letting any negative emotion or thought, regarding himself or the others, crack his perfectly tight-composed porcelain shell, and to always just amaze people with his abilities, never to show them any of his insecurities or doubts. This all might’ve sounded so, so simple, but of course that his mind had much more intricated spider webs within it, actually, which is why he even kept the reasons for this option’s defiant advantages memorised, and always indulged himself into believing its perfection over how his life was going to be ruled from this point  _onwards._

After Janez’s death.

Like a flash, already well-trained over the long summer, his mind changed itself onto another topic. The new guy. What was his name again? Mihe– _Mihai._ So he was supposed to become Dražen’s new desk partner. He went on thinking about mundane stuff; was something  _special_  prone to happen to them while they were partners like that? Because he’s never really made any special connection with the small numbers of desk partners he had: Alfred - they fell into a casual so-called friendship, Janez - he’d meant enough for him before moving into the same desk together.

He wonders what could Mihai be into; comics, mangas, Netflix originals? sewing, war movies, chick-lits? He struck Dražen best as the kind that was into New York bestsellers unconsciously, a follower no matter the fighting and original values he’d put on the plate. Most probably, he’ll have to find it all out himself through conversation, if he wanted to know it so badly. What a shame.

Dražen just feels like he  _has_  to use the remaining time of this break in a productive way, so out goes the fat sketchbook he takes with him on the go. His bag is terribly cluttered and it’s no wonder his right shoulder has already started to hurt while walking down the hallways (really, what was he thinking when he’d put even his customized small make-up kit in it?!)

No action pose seems to work with any of the characters he’s conjured up in his mind, so he decides to go on trance mode. His brain’s still buzzing and feeling like its clay’s gonna melt soon, but at least he’s now doodling frogs. A frog at a table, drinking tea, a frog balancing plates on its head, another frog putting on eyeliner and another one, clothed in a hoodie, spraying a graffiti on a wall. The page’s almost filled up.

 

_Dražen lazily rises his head from the cold surface of his desk, and tries to focus his tired eyes on the piece of paper Janez’s been scribbling while he was trying to catch a nap, presumably._

_“Are you…are you sketching…snails?” he mumbles, his voice still rough and drowsy._

_“They’re frogs, actually.” Janez is quick to correct him._

_“Frogs…”_

_“I just felt like doodling something slimy.”_

_“Ah, yeah…”_

_Janez turns his head around to make eye contact with him properly, and Dražen feels concern drip out of his stare._

_“How much sleep did you get last night?”_

_“Oh, um…just enough. I just have a slight headache right now, that’s why i’ve…,” Dražen yawns, setting his head back on top of his folded arms, “…did, this…I guess..”_

_Janez nods briefly, after a pause. A question is drilling at the back of his mind, though, and he decides to pose it even if he knows it’ll have a bad impact on his desk partner’s current mood._

_“Did they pick on you again?” he spits it out, nervously, like a fatal projectile to the already wounded figure next to him._

_Dražen fakes snoring._

 

His frogs grow larger on the next page of the sketchbook, with erratic lines smudged over and over, and making the whole page look darker and darker, literally. Dražen’s breathing comes out in short, arrhythmic puffs, but he doesn’t bring himself to pay much attention to it. He feels his left hand grow warm, then hot and like it’s tightly held still by something; must be his unconsciousness trying to detach him from this fresh attack.

But then he saw it. Blurred, and pale beyond realism, but with violet streaks along the rashed skin, a hand grasping his. Its wrist was lost through thin air, and Dražen tried to place its overall contour better. He was almost sure his mind and eyes were just playing tricks on him, and duplicated the image of his hand, which was in turn clenching a pen. The light friction he felt, however, made him realise that the hand was actually moving itself, apart from his own. He watched the spectacle mesmerized, as his left hand continued to press down, absently but in a clockwork-like manner, even more thick lines over the already existing ones, and the ghostly hand gaining more colour, more contour, shaking his own hand more roughly.

One moment of two of his neurons not keeping the link between them and the show altogether, and he found himself pressing the remaining hot stump of his cigarette, which was still faintly burning, into his elastic skin, and drag it along. The almost transparent now hand didn’t back up so easily though, and he had to rub it harder, throw it over the window, pack up his things and hurry to class. He needed another medium, quick.

Mihai’s pencil case is a black, terribly tattered thing with the logo of the band  _Metallica_  on it. Nothing less of his expectations for him, so far. Dražen was going through his bullet journal, looking at the beautiful illustrations he has made himself or cut out of various magazines; it looked like he let to slip away the opportunity of wearing an outfit he’d put together since August on his first day of college.

“I can assure you, the outfit you’re wearing _is_  good enough, no need to grumble over it.”

“Excuse me?”

Mihai dropped the  _arching brow_  look he’s given Dražen in the cafeteria in the favor of just some half-lidded, attentive eyes, and rectified himself.

“You were mumbling some things akin to  _“goddamn it, i forgot to put the shirt on the back of my chair to remember to wear the outfit”_  but, like I said earlier, this outfit you’re currently wearing fits you very well so no need to beat yourself over it.”

Dražen merely blinked: he didn’t even hear himself saying that. He’ll have to cover it up, though.

“Um, yeah..thanks for the…compliment, I guess–wait no I mean the advice, yeah, the advice.”

Mihai visibly held in a chuckle.

“You could’ve taken it as a compliment too, honestly.”

The syrup poured into their small conversation made the tips of Dražen’s lips arch up a bit, and open up more to his new desk partner.

“So,” Dražen nervously cleared his throat, “I guess that you put your hair up in a ponytail when eating and stuff? Because now that your hair’s down I think that I actually saw you among the people walking around the classroom, getting to know each other.”

“Yeah, I do. Gets dirty else, course.” Mihai lifted some tips as to make his point across the other. He burned to ask the other of why he has decided to just take a seat at the back of the classroom for most of the course’s time, but opted to go on a safer path.

“I have to say, you  _do_  rock buns.”

Dražen instinctively touched the loose bun at the back of his head, and chirped.

“Oh, this? Made it in a total hurry!”

And in the same  _total hurry_  he had noticed the oh-so-familiar figure seated in the other row of desks. That short, way thinner than he recalled it to be frame. The big brown eyes, that now pierced him with an agonizing dullness. The up-do which revealed a pale forehead, the blue of its veins almost blending together with the yellow tone of the skin.

That translucid figure was undoubtedly Janez.


	3. Chapter III - The Most Beautiful Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Read this chapter and, at its end, you will be greeted with a surprise.

_I’m coming out of my cage and I’ve been doing just fine_

_Gotta, gotta be down because I want it all_

Dražen taps his fingers on the swing, not even feeling his face hurt anymore because of the wide smile he’s displaying.

_It started out with a kiss, how did it end up like this?_

_It was only a kiss, it was only a kiss_

The sound comes out muddled out of the little plastic box that he’s holding in his hand, but the boy couldn’t care less: this day has already became one of his favourite days out of all that he’s lived through so far, by the tender age of seven. His parents took him to McDonald’s, which was of course a rare occasion to begin with. His Happy Meal came with this green little plastic box that played this upbeat song, which lyrics he still couldn’t quite understand; he could only make out the word  _kiss._

His mother advised him to try and get talking with the kids in the park, to get more confident in his pronunciation and grammar and hopefully even pick out new words; it wasn’t that Dražen was struggling with this new language, no, rather, he’d picked it up pretty easily, theoretically-speaking, but he had almost no experience when it came to actually  _speaking_  it.

Dražen was a heavy case of a shut-in child, to begin with. He didn’t like to talk, or perhaps he was too shy to? His parents did convince themselves of always assuming this, but on top of that he was incredibly sensitive, and the cases during which Dražen has started to violently cry in front of another kid because of how they didn’t play a game the way  _Dražen_  knew they had to, or wanted to, weren’t all that uncommon.

Right now, Dražen didn’t like the faces of the kids around him. He plain-out just didn’t. He found their grinning cheeks unnatural, and their laughs like sharp, high-pitched intakes of air, that sent to him anything but a message of joy. What, were they having  _fun?_  This isn’t how he would’ve had had fun.

_Criinkk_

Dražen turns his doll-like, fluffy head around. Another boy just took a seat on the empty swing next to his, and the metal keeping it hanging creaked horribly. He quickly notices that this small, pudgy boy has a round, squishy face and puffed-out chestnut-colored hair. Or is it more towards chocolate? Dražen squints his eyes, trying to figure it out.

“What’s with that look?”

Dražen has unintentionally leaned in closer and closer to the boy while trying to determine his hair colour.

“E-Eh…?”

He quickly snaps back in his original place, almost falling off the swing. The other boy retains a curious look, but drops his gaze soon after.

“Y-You almost looked like an angry witch ready to eat me.”

Dražen frowns.

“Why…t-that?”

He is pleasantly surprised at himself for being able to mutter out those words.

“Well, you have a very intense pair of green eyes, and bad witches from stories also almost always have green eyes too.”

“Where do you know that from?” Dražen quickly spats out. “I-I mean, how can you be so s-sure?”

Janez raises a quick brow.

“Haven’t you ever seen any illustrations of them, in books?”

-|-|-

“K-Kitchen.”

_“Chi-cken.”_

“C-Chi-Chicken!!” Dražen fidges his fingers around, “S-Sorry.”

Janez’s brows are furrowed, and his eyes dedicated and lucid. But take a closer, deeper look and you’ll quickly come to realise that those chocolate little bonbons could never shot a mean, serious look without glazing it over with warmth.

“You shouldn’t apologize so much often, it’s neither good nor fits you.”

“I…know.”

“You do?”

Dražen keeps his dry eyes glued to the colourful, shiny table on the wall before them, cornered by so many other colourful, shiny tables.  _Animals from the Farm._  He takes a sharp breath in.

“Yes. I just thought I should’ve apologised to you in  _that_  situation,” Dražen raised his brow at the floor, “… _this_  situation?”

“I’d say _this_ , myself. No, wait,  _that?_ Hmm,” Janez puts on a grimace because of the laugh he’s holding in, “You made me question it too!”

Dražen thinks that this is the turning point of the situation they’re in where he should start laughing but he can’t help but feel weird about hearing his laugh echoing in the room.

-|-|-|-

“Why can’t you  _just_  be respectful for once?!” Dražen snaps, spitefully turning his head to the back of the classroom, where the entirety of the clique is seated. His hair is covering his face because of the sudden movement, and he finds himself staring in the eyes of the teen whom he has addressed to.

“How’s that your problem!?” the young man in question throws his arms in the air, sighing profoundly and then muttering some slurs under his breath.

_“…bitch be back at it again…”_

Dražen swallows the stung he has received through those words, and retorts in a shakier voice, spitting out his words and tripping and tumbling over them.

“I don’t…I mean I don’t want, need to lose my precious education years on y-you a-all who keep on interrupting classes and argue with teachers and show no interest whatsoever yet always think you deserve everything on a gold plate!!”

“Hey, hey, shut the hell up, wouldya?” the boy laughs, “pff, hear him out, his  _precious education years.”_

“Why won’t you move to another class?” the Princess of the Class  _(this is how Dražen has nicknamed her in his diary)_  asks, “there’s nothing stopping you from doing that.”

Dražen raises his brow like that high, the girl almost looks shocked.

“So you’re telling me that it’s me who’s got to move, not him, or someone else, because I wouldn’t want to call names now but—”

“But _what?”_  the first guy laughs uncontrollably. By this point, he doesn’t think like that much of Dražen’s outburst other than the desire to make fun of it out of pure ecstasy.

“I hope that you are all finished now, Dražen, the others,” their teacher tries to state, looking around the class, “this is the kind of business you will have to deal with between each other and with your homeroom teacher, not during Physics class.”

“O-of course, Mrs., of course.”

Dražen has found himself rambling apologies yet again, backing off the stage he has bravely built for himself.

“Dražen, no matter how much you’d want to change them, you’d only end up consuming yourself, your mind included,” Janez adopts a low profile, and whispers by Dražen’s ear, “you’ve got to stop doing this.”

Dražen can understand his desk mate’s message clearly. Why even bother starting it all when you always end up lowering your head?

-|-|-|-|-

He’s following the darker patches of his milkshake through half-lidded eyes. With his straw, he chases them around. Janez watches the show, absently stirring his coffee himself.

“Wouldn’t you want me to ask them for another straw for you to play with?”

“It’s not the straw that it’s important, it’s the drink.”

“Yeah, thought so too, but..”

Dražen gives him a suggestive look.

“You wouldn’t buy me another _drink,_  huh?”

Janez tenses up, but brushes the feeling off, it was just a joke.

“So like, any plans for this summer?” Dražen wants to know.

“Hm, nothing much yet. Why do you ask?”

“Just curious,” Dražen leans closer to the other, “I know this is going to sound buggy, but don’t your parents have any conferences to attend this summer?”

Janez actually gives his question quite the time to think of a good answer.

“No idea, honestly..?” an interesting thought pops up in Janez’s head, “Don’t count on us having a better hideout in my room, so!”

“A hideout for what?”

Now that’s a tricky question.

“Um, well a hideout for..”

Million jackpot question.

“Don’t know, talking in peace and watching weird movies I guess.”

“Weird as in porn?”

“Dražen!”

“What?” the young man chuckles, “they’re good stress-relievers, trust me.”

Janez gives him a questioning but benevolent look.

“Think so? Well I’ll need a good load of stress-relievers if I don’t want to be dead by September.”

“Dead by college? What kind of character from a young adult novel do you think you are,” Dražen gives him a soft jab with his elbow,  _“young man?”_

“Honestly if I’d be one for real, I’d be that fucked up side character who just does stupid shit, I’d say.”

“You’d totally be the protagonist.”

“In your eyes, of course.”

“You’d be the protagonist as to not do that stupid shit, y’know? Good thing you aren’t anything like that in real life.”

“Definitely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Along with this chapter, a contest is launched: I am waiting for your best ideas (min. 3/person) regarding an extra chapter describing only the posts from Dražen‘s diary, as to see what would the readers of the fic perceive this intimate space of his to be like. The best set of ideas will win a little something made by me, be it a drawing, edit (icons included), aesthetic, playlist…you name it! A request, which might as well be another written piece too.  
> The deadline is October 1st! Good luck!


	4. Chapter IV - Ave Academiae!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally bringing the 4th chapter, featuring bits and pieces of Dra’s diary. Have fun putting it all together in the previous chapters!  
> Also, this chapter is dedicated to mayonnaise-is-not-a-gender on tumblr, as I didn't have the time to make her a gift back in November: wishing you the best, Eve! Thank you for supporting me and my works.  
> (Dra's drawing is a drawing I made when I was little, so credit @me)

_October 14th, 20xx_

Dear diary,

School was pretty boring again today. It has been boring for some weeks now. I don’t like History and Math really much, in History we have to memorise too much stuff and in Math I don’t like calcullating.

Science is funny because we do many experiments with baloons and magnets, but we also study plants and insects. Last Tusday our teacher went with us outside and she said “Now, let’s try to catch some butterflies!”. I didn’t liked doing that, because we shouldn’t keep butterflies caged.

I don’t like it that our teacher always asks me “Did you understand that, Dražen?” after every part of text we read or every exercise. I know English pretty good already, and it’s not even my maternal language. All of the kids asked me “How do you know English so well?” and I said that I learned it from the Internet and the boxes food is in.

Mom wants to buy me more books in English but I don’t want to read them or do any grammar exercises because I have more books in Croatian to read and etc.

Also I stopped writing everyday in you because I didn’t have the time or more things to write about.

Bye, diary

PS: I forgot to tell you that I like Art class, even if what the teacher tells us to paint is pretty boring like the seasons, our pet, something that we like. I drawed this on mom’s computer yesterday, and I printed it.

Is it pretty or not? Should I keep drawing?

 

 

_February 14th, 20xx_

Dear diary,

I feel like I’m just going crazy. Purely, blatantly, obviously. Just, crazy. Why am I in such a state? Well, let me just tell you all about it.

I haven’t written much in you in ages because, to be frank, it kinda started to feel like an obligation for me to do that: “Dear diary, today this and that happened. I felt like this and that. So and so are being assholes to me.”. You understand? So I think I’ll be using you for short, bomb-from-the-cannon-like venting from now on. I think that would do me good too. Hell, why haven’t I allowed myself to do that earlier with you…

Anyways, school’s been boring. Always been like that, isn’t it now? I look back and I see even younger me had the same opinion…and I’ll admit, we are both just the same amount of drama queens.

Alfred brought his new action figure of Doctor Strange to school and literally terrorised me with it. I really appreciate the fact that, though, even if he’s fanboying and packing punches of the figure like a little kid, he’s also very attentive to its painting details, pose, construction. I like that, makes me think there’s actually something in him.

Janko’s been hanging out with popular kids, and I  ~~don’t know how to feel about that~~   don’t like it. Why is he suddenly glueing himself to them? Don’t tell me he wants to become more popular, Janko’s perfect just as he is: among his gang of nerds and with me by his side. It’s an actual very good thing that he hasn’t ever been taken as “that rich kid who’s gonna get everything done by mommy and daddy” because he isn’t, really. He’d always worked so hard for whatever he’d wanted to accomplish, and lately, he hasn’t been lending even a fraction of his ear to nasty and just purely shitty opinions about him. So proud to see him having grown out of that.

Still, I’ve been talking with Enis in the park near school because we’ve been hearing quite…distressing things about Janez especially. There was this big party hosted by another rich kid (his name isn’t even important) and Janez went too, of course. Long story short, heard he emptied all sorts of cylindrical recipients, including one’s guy’s dick. Oopsie, was that too sudden? We’re only in 9th grade though, how in the hell could you even do that?! Enis said rumor is he was so smashed, he tried to charm up all guys who seemed free. This whole affair makes me feel sick to my stomach.

Then again, I’ve only had a flick with a girl, and even then, it was Enis setting us up because I would’ve rather just draw her all day and read posts on r o m a n t i c tumblr blogs than, I don’t know, actually talk to her. Didn’t work out, and the whole experience somehow made me feel…uncomfortable about relationships. I don’t know. Like I’d rather know myself as a dog lady than with a family formed of 2 kids and a sweet, intelligent wife, as little Dra has always wanted.

I’m starting to feel tired of writing. I’ll write some songs here to remind me of how I felt towards Janez on this day. I think I’m still in love with him. Wow that sounded bland, like don’t ask me where do I know I’m in love with him in the first place, and all that.

What can I say, feelings don’t sit well with me!

{{{ Blondie - Call Me

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - False Pretense

Siddharta - Na Soncu

There. - The Proof of Human Freedom

Slipknot - Snuff }}}

 

 

_May 14th, 20xx_

Dearest diary,

Feeling like shit. Been puking day and night. Can’t keep anything in. Wanna keep my figure tho ;) (yiikesss haven’t made that emoticon in ages!)

Finally got dick pics from that guy. Now he’s expecting me to go to his house in the middle of the night and suck him off probs; I ain’t no inccubus material, sorry hun.

Mom almost bust me playing the dom online the day before yesterday. Ouch.

Janez hasn’t been good. He’s thinning out day by day, but is acting way too happy-go-lucky out of his character. Remember his deal with Vuk? They are now just like a ball and a dog: Janez is the ball, Vuk the dog. The ball bounces excitedly, all around the place!! It tries to stir the dog to it. It follows it around, tries to get into its very flesh. Bark-bark, doggie! But the dog is tired of seeing the ball jumping around him, not him jumping around the ball. “Ball, please leave me alone.” “I won’t ever, doggie!!”.

I have a very bad feeling about Janko. But at the same time, I can’t be his nanny, Jesus Christ, he needs to be able to stand up for himself without any help, he’s 17, for Christ’s sake.


	5. Chapter V - Dialogues about the Veiled Ghost

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all who have been following this series! This is all I can say. I might as well say this is the result of LuizaTeea, who reminded me I still haven't finished this fic through their lovely comment. I hope it won't seem too rushed up, as I wrapped everything up in just one chapter. I'll let you all picture the unwritten.
> 
> Off to the next work!

“So how did you two meet again?”

 

Dražen dips his fry in the mayonnaise with such a passion, Mihai is once again forced to remember how earnestly he thought the immense love his new roommate announced he had for fries was exaggerated until yesterday evening when he watched, from the other end of the table, how that green-eyed twunk devoured a full bowl of fries with ketchup over right under his eyes, with no shame after a courteous _“Want some?”_

 

“Some kinda club,” Mihai leans in the plastic chair, a smile starting to curve his lips, “actually, a very weird melange of a club:  _ English Literature over History _ . ‘Course though, most of the time we just end up talking about one in a general context.”

 

“Mhm. I see.”

 

It’s not like Dražen’s thought that, all of this time, Vuk’s entire cognitive system was in his balls exclusively but...Mišić, a history student?! That was just too much.

 

“And what did you talk with him?”

 

“Dražen, I get that you’ve pretty much only got nasty sentiments in regard to the guy, but that’s the third time you’re asking me about Vuk.”

 

“ _ Only _ third, you should be grateful for that,” Dražen scrutinizes him with a sadistic smirk, “what we talked in the hallway doesn’t count so you can jot that down to only two. Also,” he adds, with a somewhat disappointed tone, “you still smile like a fool every time I ask.”

 

“Possibly problematic boyfriend to your best friend in high school, difficult, impulsive,” Mihai recites, “No offense to what Janez went through, and what you went through together with him, but, I wanna get to know him myself, okay? I’ll feed him his own shit if he pulls anything on me with a dedication from you.”

 

“No need to. Mihai, he wasn’t...his boyfriend, it’s complicated, like—”

 

“You told me about it. I understand.”

 

Dražen’s expression softens into one of harmless, pitiable concern. 

 

“You want to go for it, Mihai. I see it in your eyes.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“You fell for him,” Dražen deadpans as he stuffs his mouth.

 

“In 2 hours and 35 minutes.”

 

“In two weeks full of interaction.”

 

Mihai frowns, glances down at his chocolate milk and, defeated, stirs it.

  
  


✱✱✱

  
  


Janez’s skin flies around in the thin air even more beautifully in the dead of the night, hair almost white, eyes dull. He picks up the curtain, holds it before his face, veins protruding from the slick hand. His lips seem curled up as he holds it there, then it’s dropped, and the smirk disappears too.

 

“Mihai,” Dražen whispers, eyes still, spine straight, “he’s here…wrapping the curtain around his face..”

 

Mihai isn’t sleeping, he hasn’t the whole night. First, Janez was in the hallway, a bit hidden from Dražen’s eye. Then, in the doorway, leg pending inside and outside the room. Now, he’s behind the lemon-colored limp curtains, playing Mata Hari. He hopes next time Janez will just drop from the ceiling in Dražen’s bed so it’ll all be over.

 

“Dražen, I...I can’t do anything about that.”

 

“Mihai, you’re awake?”

 

The Romanian unconsciously slaps his cheek, lips drawn in a hard line.

 

“I am, sorry about–Dražen,” Mihai lowers his voice, eyes glued to the curtains that slowly sway because of a soft breeze, despite not being able to see Janez himself, “he’s not...he’s not there. Dražen, I told you this many times before.”

 

Mihai climbs out of bed, and goes to wrap his hands around his roommate’s shoulders. All frantically, so he hits his foot in the frame of the bed, and lands a bit too hard. Dražen doesn’t flinch.

 

“Dražen,” Mihai’s voice melts from so much concern in it, “Janez is dead. He is not in this room. It’s your brain imagining him. And, speaking of that,” his voice lowers, “are you sure you still don’t want to visit the school’s therapist? Not to cram too much stuff right now, but—”

 

Dražen’s opened his mouth, but no words escaped. Even the smallest of sounds died in his throat. Before his eyes, Janez drops the curtain for the last time, and walks in the balcony through the open door. He watches the moon, and his eyes look happier. Dražen doesn’t want to answer Mihai as he gets up from behind him. 

 

“Why did you leave the door of the balcony open?”

  
  


✱✱✱

  
  


Alfred’s hand sprays useless particles of the wooden flowers in the air, each quick movement of the sandpaper gnawing away at the pulp of the piece. Dražen covers the field of sight of his bust made out of clay, not letting it look at Alfred’s wood belt adorned with flowers and leaves that hangs from the ceiling. The beauty of  _ that _ artwork is too much for his poor bust’s eyes.

 

“Why did you hang it on the ceiling, again?” Dražen questions, not even bothering to turn his head to his classmate.

 

“Makes it easier for me to paper it all around,” Alfred answers, confident in the state of his work, “how’s the old man doing?”

 

Dražen scoffs, lowering his head, “I’m getting there.”

 

The  _ old man _ is the nickname Alfie gave to the bust Dražen’s been working on for a steady two months now. Its expression is so full, so  _ exaggerated _ at this point, that the American can’t help but wonder what is Dražen looking to achieve in continuing to work on it.

 

“What do you wanna do to him further? He looks pretty much done to me.”

 

“He  _ isn’t _ done,” Dražen harshly plunges in, turning his head over the shoulder, “It’d take me a while to tell you, but there are still many things that need to be done to him.”

 

“At this point, I thought you just wanted to try out as many new techniques on him, but okay.”

 

Dražen widens his eyes, brows brushing together too close: for some reason, he found that coming from Alfred very offensive.

 

“E-erm,” Alfred looks into his eyes, glasses askew, “don’t take it in a wrong way.”

 

The other turns their attention back on their work.

 

“Although, Dražen, y’know, you told me you’re in Socio for securing a future job in...uh, what was the—”

 

“Human Relations. Or Resources,” Dražen laughs at himself. “Well, whatever said company decides to call it, I’ll stan that.”

 

“I don’t think that’s the word you wanted to use.”

 

“Who cares?” Dražen gets up, dusting off his work pants. He decides to go for a stretch, and his fingertips seem to touch the ceiling. “So, what about my first major?”

 

“Uh, right, well I wanted to say that even if you’d decide to focus on art later on instead, I still think you could fare.”

 

“Really? How so?”

 

“What do you mean  _ how so _ ?”

 

Dražen switches faces around, “Nevermind.”

 

Alfred stares at him for a moment, then shrugs his shoulders and nestles his sandpaper in the magic box of tools. 

 

“I’m leaving,” he casually announces, flailing around a tartan shirt like the sail of a boat before getting it on his shoulders. “You coming too, Dra?”

 

Dražen gazes contemplatively at his work. The eyebrows and nose of the bust aren’t going to be able to support any more clay, and the chin’s giving up under its own weight and—

 

“Dražen, you coming or not?”

 

“Yes,” the Croat breathes out, hastily getting ready to leave the studio.

 

Down the hall, the art school is quiet. Old and new blocks of wood, clay, plaster follow their steps, having been given faces and legs to walk by former students. Yet, they only follow them with their eyes.

 

“Hey, Dražen?”

 

“Hm?”

 

Alfred moves his stare to the window, warm and kind with its light.

 

“If Janez wouldn’t have...ya know, do you...have any idea of what he would’ve studied in college?”

 

Dražen looks over his shoulder in the empty yard down below, but doesn’t find anything interesting to look at. He fishes for his phone in his shoulder bag.

 

“Linguistics, or something about ideologies.”

 

“What kind of ideologies?”

 

Alfred’s turned back to him just as his green-eyed classmate’s started to sprint down the hall.

 

“All kinds. Political, religious. He was interested in them all,” Dražen waves to him. “Sorry, I’m late to a projection held in the Fashion Design building!”

 

“Dražen, it’s in the same buil—”

 

“See ya tomorrow, Alfred! Bye!”

 

After a somewhat disappointed frown, Alfred starts walking again. He’s always wanted to ask Dražen if he’s got any idea  _ why _ Janez did what he did, but it seems that’d be too much for him, seeing he reacted like  _ that _ upon just having been asked for what Janez would’ve went after if he wouldn’t have killed himself.

  
  


✱✱✱

  
  


“I’m glad you picked Sociology instead of English,” Dražen spits out the shell of the seed.

 

“Ah-a? What’s this, all of a sudden?” Mihai laughs, swiftly scooping some seeds out of the bag. “I’m a Socio major hanging out with a History bastard, remember?”

 

The city stretches out beneath them, relaxing after another terrible day. The sun is tangerine in its shaky waves, but in Dražen’s flickering eyes, Mihai sees it as green, a punching-deep green.

 

“Mihai,” the Croat mutters, looking down below over the balcony’s railing, at the ants of people, “are you gonna remain in this city after we’re done?”

 

The Romanian holds him lightly by the lower hem of his shirt, “Hm, guess so. I could land on stuff in both Socio and programming.”

 

“Must be so handy that they recruited you that time right after highschool.”

 

“Two years off for bullshit, Dražen, two years,” Mihai holds up two fingers as his roommate faces him again, a warm smile etched on his face.

 

“I don’t feel like he’s anywhere around anymore.”

 

“Who?”

 

Dražen’s smile flattens, his eyes picking up the sun’s last moments, “Janez.”

 

“Well, isn’t that,” Mihai slows down his words’ pace, “...a good thing?”

 

“Like, nowhere. Not even if I want to, I can’t bring back again that gho–figure of him.”

 

Mihai takes in Dražen’s face, the way his nose scrunchies a bit. He hopes it was “Janez” who made him scrunch it like that, almost in disgust.

 

“Dražen, tomorrow, how about we leave the house?”

 

“Where to?”

 

“That cake shop you like,” Mihai almost lets a smirk escape from how sweet he feels.

 

“But do you like it too?”

 

“Mhm,” he nods. 

 

Dražen looks at him uncertain, mouth agape. Who’s going to pay  _ this _ time?

 

“Oh, right, my treat. Forgot to mention,” Mihai answers his thoughts, looking almost shy.

 

“Again? Now you’re just making me feel bad, come on.”

 

Dražen makes a funny face, and Mihai doesn’t block the nudge that follows. The Croat doesn’t think anymore about how nice it would’ve been if Janez would’ve been there with them, the Sun hopefully hiding his growing brown roots. Instead, he thinks about how cool they are with each other,  _ cool kids _ . With Mihai, he never tires out and wants to go to sleep. 

 

He never feels like wanting to take a nap hanging from the ceiling.


End file.
